e hurrying
along without any order, and rode up to attack them, the commander of
the cavalry being Asopodoros the son of Timander; and having fallen upon
them they slew six hundred of them, and the rest they pursued and drove
to Kithairon.

70. These then perished thus ingloriously; 75 and meanwhile the Persians
and the rest of the throng, having fled for refuge to the palisade,
succeeded in getting up to the towers before the Lacedemonians came; and
having got up they strengthened the wall of defence as best they could.
Then when the Lacedemonians 76 came up to attack it, there began between
them a vigorous 77 fight for the wall: for so long as the Athenians
were away, they defended themselves and had much the advantage over
the Lacedemonians, since these did not understand the art of fighting
against walls; but when the Athenians came up to help them, then there
was a fierce fight for the wall, lasting for a long time, and at length
by valour and endurance the Athenians mounted up on the wall and made a
breach in it, through which the Hellenes poured in. Now the Tegeans were
the first who entered the wall, and these were they who plundered the
tent of Mardonios, taking, besides the other things which were in it,
also the manger of his horse, which was all of bronze and a sight worth
seeing. This manger of Mardonios was dedicated by the Tegeans as an
offering in the temple of Athene Alea, 78 but all the other things
which they took, they brought to the common stock of the Hellenes. The
Barbarians however, after the wall had been captured, no longer formed
themselves into any close body, nor did any of them think of making
resistance, but they were utterly at a loss, 79 as you might expect from
men who were in a panic with many myriads of them shut up together in a
small space: and the Hellenes were able to slaughter them so that out
of an army of thirty myriads, 80 if those four be subtracted which
Artabazos took with him in his flight, of the remainder not three
thousand men survived. Of the Lacedemonians from Sparta there were slain
in the battle ninety-one in all, of the Tegeans sixteen, and of the
Athenians two-and-fifty.

71. Among the Barbarians those who proved themselves the best men were,
of those on foot the Persians, and of the cavalry the Sacans, and for
a single man Mardonios it is said was the best. Of the Hellenes, though
both the Tegeans and the Athenians proved themselves good men, yet the
Lacedemoni